1. Reservation of Copyright
The disclosure of this patent document contains material, which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
2. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to machines that dispense selected objects, and more particularly to a sensing system that reliably detects dispensed objects.
3. Description of Background Information
Glass front vending machines are machines designed for vending packaged snack foods and candy products of various sizes and shapes. These machines generally have a selector panel, located off to one side of the glass front, and use some form of horizontal trays, partitioned into columns, to store the products to be vended.
Typically, after a consumer makes the requisite payment and enters the desired selection on the selector panel, the forward-most product from the selected column is ejected or dislodged and the product drops freely into a delivery hopper at the bottom of the machine. The space that the product falls through is the area between the fronts of the columns and the back of the glass front, commonly referred to as the vend space.
It is important that vending machines operate in a reliable manner and provide consumers with the selected product without the need to expend unusual effort to obtain the product. With this said, there exists various events that can compromise the reliability of vending machine operations. For example, the spatial orientation and wrinkling of packages, the content distribution of packages, the tumbling of packages through the vend space, and empty spiral pockets can all contribute to the mis-vending of products.
Moreover, the construction of conventional glass-front vending machines complicates reliable vending. For example, conventional glass-front vending machines are generally modularly constructed, allowing the vertically-spaced rows of product columns, and/or laterally spaced columns per row to be changed either at the time the machine is ordered by its purchaser, in the field, or both. Such row and column changes may require the reconfiguration of sensors and associated circuitry, which compromises the reliability of sensing operations.
Some vending machines determine the dispensing of a selected product by employing a detection scheme that radiates a single beam within a predefined area. As the selected product passes through the predefined area, the beam detects the product and presumes that the product has been dispensed. However, in such a configuration, the beam often lacks sufficient coverage and the selected product may fail to break the single beam and escape detection. This may be especially true of vending machines that offer products that vary substantially in size. In such cases, larger areas may be required to accommodate larger products, so that a single beam detection scheme may fail to detect smaller products that escape the beam.
Other vending machines determine the dispensing of a selected product by providing sensors, which sense the vibrations or impact on an outlet chute by a relatively heavy product, such as a can or bottle. However, impact or vibrational sensing may not perform reliably when some of the offered products are relatively light in weight, such as, for example, potato chips or pretzels.
Moreover, regardless of the detection schemes used, products that are selected often become lodged or stuck. Such lodging may occur even after the product has been detected as being dispensed, resulting in mis-vends and forcing consumers to expend unusual effort to obtain the product or get their money back.
Apparatuses, systems, and methods consistent with the principles of the present invention address the need to provide an optical vend-sensing system that reliably detects dispensed objects. Accordingly, an apparatus, system and method, consistent with these principles as embodied and broadly described herein, include a dispensing mechanism configured to initiate vending operations and dispense an article into a vend space through which the article falls upon selection by a consumer. The present invention further includes two reflecting surfaces, each mounted at opposite sides of the vend space and positioned substantially parallel to each other and an electromagnetic emitter configured to generate at least one optical beam. The beam is reflected off of each of the reflecting surfaces, such that the reflected electromagnetic beam traverses across the vend space.
The present invention also includes an electromagnetic radiation detector, configured to detect the reflected beam from the reflected surfaces and signal when the selected article has been dispensed, based on when the selected article interrupts the reflected beam as it falls through the vend space.
The present invention further includes a machine control unit, which communicates with the detector and dispensing mechanism, and is configured to receive the signal from the detector indicating that the article has been dispensed. In response to receiving the signal from the detector, machine control unit terminates the vending operations of the dispensing mechanism.